


Lavernius Tucker and the Tattoo Conspiracy

by illumynare



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Crack, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Tattoos, Timeline What Timeline, everyone gets naked but Tucker, lots of swearing, surprisingly un-sexy, this took a sudden left turn into Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 15:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11061462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: The first rule of Blue Team is Be Cool andnobody is letting him be cool.(Or: the AU where everyoneexceptTucker has glowing tattoos.)





	Lavernius Tucker and the Tattoo Conspiracy

**Author's Note:**

> RIP my dignity. We had a good run.
> 
> Huge, _huge_ thanks to Taller, best of ~~wives and best of women~~ beta readers. She really went above and beyond for this one.

Caboose starts it, or anyway, he's the first one Tucker finds out about. One day he gets peanut butter all over the inside of his armor, and Tucker doesn't call "not it" fast enough, so he has to hose him down. First Caboose throws a temper tantrum and doesn't want to take his armor off at all, and then he strips stark-ass naked—which is actually a good thing, considering how far the peanut butter had gotten. 

And that's how Tucker sees the tattoo. 

It's huge, covering the whole of Caboose's back, geometric designs interlocked with lines of a weird script that Tucker recognizes, after a moment, as Sangheili. The lines are a deep, cobalt blue with an opalescent sheen—crisper and more vivid than any tattoo Tucker's ever seen—and then Caboose shifts a little, turning his back out of the sunlight, and Tucker realizes the tattoo is actually _glowing_.

"Whoa, dude, what's that?"

"Oh, that is from my best friend," says Caboose.

"Church gave you a glowing tattoo written in Sangheili?" Tucker says. "Dude, I do _not_ believe that. Also, if you call him your best friend again, I think he's gonna shoot you."

"No," says Caboose, "that is from my old best friend. When I was on a team that fought the aliens."

"Wait, you actually fought in the war?" asks Tucker, slightly envious. It's not like he wanted his head shot off by Covenant forces, but he'd thought that being in a few battles and getting some cool scars would help him pick up chicks. Instead he got pulled straight out of Basic and sent to the ass-end of nowhere without a single woman in sight.

"Yeah, we went to a planet that had some stuff, and we were supposed to do things with it, but then the ship crashed, which was definitely not my fault because I did not touch ANY of the buttons, and everybody died in the explosions."

"Wait," says Tucker, "then how—"

"Or they died in the lava. Or the quicksand. Or the psychokinetic carnivorous plants. Or the shooting from the aliens, who were also dying. Yeah, everyone was dead after that. But there was one alien left and we built a house together and went fishing and became best friends forever! So he gave me a tattoo instead of a bracelet. And then I went home."

Okay, _clearly_ that story is 90% bullshit, but Tucker doesn't want to spend the next three hours asking Caboose increasingly simple questions to sort out what really happened.

'Whatever," he sighs, and hits Caboose with another shower from the hose. Caboose twists his head, happily trying to drink the water out of the air.

Tucker does tell Church about it later. Church is not interested.

"Oh my _God_ , Tucker, I do not fucking _care_ how Caboose got a dumbass tattoo on his back."

"I'm just saying, it's kind of—"

"Seriously, why do _you_ care what Caboose has on his naked body?"

"Okay, don't make it weird."

(Much later, when Church is still an asshole but also Epsilon and made out of numbers, he’ll tell Tucker about hacking the extremely classified file that is Private Michael J. Caboose’s one and only real combat mission before getting shunted into the Simulation Trooper program, and Tucker will think, _Well, damn._ )

* * *

Everybody on Blue Team has a role: Caboose is the idiot. Church is the asshole. Tucker is the cool, good-looking one.

Which is why it's so unfair that Caboose gets the alien tattoo that glows in the dark and looks completely _sick_. Tucker's the one who could actually work it around the ladies . . . if there were any ladies in Blood Gulch besides Tex, who isn't a lady so much as a female velociraptor, and that's on one of her good days.

The point is, Tucker wants in on this game. When he agrees to go with Crunchbite on his stupid quest, half the reason is that he's hoping he'll get a glowing tattoo out of it. 

Instead he gets knocked up, and that's—well, Doc does remember to give him anesthetic before starting the C-section, but there's no curtain or anything, and sometimes Tucker really wishes he could forget what it looked like.

Junior, though. He's weird and he smells, but the first time he leans against Tucker and lets out a quiet _blargh,_ all Tucker can think is, _My kid. Fucking worth it._

But he still doesn't have a badass glowing tattoo.

And then it turns out that everyone else in this fucking canyon _does._

* * *

Okay, so Church never had any glowing tattoos on his actual body back when he was alive, which Tucker knows because he asked.

"I'm Jewish, you dumbass."

"Yeah, so?"

"Oh my God, you don't know anything, do you?"

"Hey, _you_ didn't know I was black."

But now he’s a ghost and he can glow in the dark so it’s pretty much the same thing.

* * *

Then there's the time that the Reds attack, and when Church starts cursing because he still can't aim with the sniper rifle, Caboose shouts, "I can help you, Church!" and runs up onto the roof with a _fucking grenade launcher._

That's loaded with paintballs, because of course it is.

"We are so screwed," Tucker sighs, gripping his rifle. He's the only member of Blue Team who's currently able to (a) hit anything (b) with actual ammo, and that means they're not 4v3, they're 4v1, and Tucker is _still_ too pretty to die like this and disappoint all the ladies.

Except Caboose hits Simmons with a paintball. 

And it's blue paint.

"Son of a Manchurian Candidate!" Sarge yells. "Those dirty Blues are trying to brainwash Simmons. The only way to save him is immediate amputation."

" _WHAT?_ But I feel fine! Suck it, Blues! See?"

"The paint is on his torso," says Grif. "I don't think he can survive without his lungs. Wait, does he even have those anymore?"

"As much as I hate to admit that this moron has any reasonable point, it's clear that there's only one solution. We have to field-strip Simmons."

"But _Sarge_ —" Simmons's voice is cut off as Sarge tackles him.

"Oh, boy," says Donut. "I have got the _best_ theme song for this."

As Sarge rips off Simmons's armor, Donut starts singing "Take it Off" while performing a dance routine with a lot of hip-thrusts.

"Wait," says Church. "Did Caboose just . . . save our asses?"

"Shit, don't tell him that," Tucker mutters.

"Yes, well, I didn't want to mention it, but since you insist, I did save us all. Stupid Tucker."

"Heheh, yeah, Caboose is more useful than you today, Tucker."

"Seriously?" says Tucker. "I'm the fucking _chosen one,_ dude. Caboose is just an idiot with blue paint."

"And the blue paint just saved our asses."

"He said it."

Below, Sarge has already gotten Simmons completely naked. It's the first time Tucker's even seen his face. He's a scrawny, ethnically ambiguous string bean with olive skin, black hair, and a lot of chrome.

And a tattoo.

A fucking bright red, _glowing_ tattoo in the pattern of a circuitboard all over his back. 

What the fuck.

Like, obviously the tattoo is part of whatever turned Simmons into a cyborg, and Tucker's never wanted to get any of his limbs or internal organs replaced, but it looks . . . _cool,_ okay, it is _fucking cool,_ and the Red Team nerd should not be allowed to look cooler than Tucker does. At all. In any way.

Shit, the tattoo's even pulsating, little glowing specks running down the lines of the circuit, and it's just. Not fucking fair.

"Saaaarge!" Simmons wails, hunching in on himself. "You know I'm shy!"

"Sorry, Simmons, but operational security comes first. Can't allow anyone to be compromised by the Blues."

Simmons responds with a wordless moan.

"I mean, I know it's weird to keep watching," says Church, "but he's suffering so much I can't look away."

Down below, Grif says, "Gosh, Sarge, I think I saw a little bit of paint on you too. Right . . . _there."_ He points at a spot on Sarge's back, where Tucker can see there is definitely _not_ a single drop of paint.

"Horseshoes and hand grenades! So that's their villainous plan!"

Even Tucker has never managed to get naked that fast. He'd be impressed, except he's too busy staring at the giant glowing Red Team snake tattooed on Sarge's back. How did the old fucker even _get_ that tattoo? He probably did it himself with experimental ink that’s radioactive and making him impotent, but Tucker is still a bit jealous.

"Hey, Reds," Church yells. "Looks like half your team is naked!"

“Hah!” Sarge bellows. “And so your plot is foiled again, scumbags!"

Church hefts the sniper rifle, and the Reds retreat while Tucker contemplates how it is _fucking bullshit_ that Sarge and Simmons have glowing tattoos while he doesn't.

* * *

Tucker finds out about Donut's tattoo when the Reds mount Operation Weaponized Birthday Cake, and just. The less said about that, the better.

(But sometimes Tucker wakes up in the middle of the night and wonders. You’d need some kind of mad science or alien technology just to make a glowing tattoo. How the hell do you make a tattoo that glows and _throws out sparkles?)_

* * *

Grif's tattoo is different.

Tucker still feels guilty, when he remembers seeing it.

What happens is this: Tucker finally has some free time, and sometimes, when a man has free time, he just really wants a chance to enjoy some nude sunbathing. Without his asshole CO screeching at him or his idiot teammate wanting to join in.

There's this one little nook of the canyon that Church and Caboose don't seem to know about. Sarge and Simmons don't seem to know about it either, because Tucker knows that Grif goes there sometimes too. There have even been a few times they even hung out together—not naked, okay, that would be _weird—_ but sometimes, a man wants to spend time around an asshole who isn't one of the assholes he has to live with every day. And who thinks this war is about as much bullshit as he does.

So one day, Tucker goes to the spot. Caboose tried to cook at 2 AM the night before, which meant the base caught on fire, which meant no one got any sleep, which meant Tucker just _really_ wants to stretch out in the sun and not think about anything for an hour.

Except apparently, Grif had exactly the same idea. He's flat on his stomach, face down, snoring loudly. And stark-ass naked.

What Tucker's staring at isn't Grif's ass, though, it's his back. 

It's a work of art. 

And it's a war zone. 

Because Grif is tattooed the same way Caboose is—different symbols, but the same glowing blue lines, obviously Sangheili—but the skin around the tattoos is ridged and puckered with scars. Somebody ripped Grif's back apart before decorating it, and shit shit shit, Tucker’s suddenly remembering that Grif fought against the aliens before Blood Gulch—something about _colony destroyed_ and _only survivor—_ and he doesn’t know exactly how that left Grif's back scarred around glowing Sangheili symbols, but he does not want to ask.

He backs away silently, and never, ever tells Grif what he saw.

* * *

Nothing will ever make Tucker admit it, but he never actually gets lucky with Kai, and the whole reason is the fit he pitches when he sees that glowing golden tramp stamp.

(It’s not _fragile masculinity,_ it’s this fucking CONSPIRACY of tattoos around him. The first rule of Blue Team is Be Cool and _nobody is letting him be cool._ )

* * *

There's one thing that Tucker likes about Wash right from the start:

He doesn't have any tattoos.

Okay, fine, Tucker's never checked. But even _if_ Project Freelancer was dumb enough to let its super-secret operatives have glowing tattoos, there is absolutely no way that Agent "I love drills and protocol" Washington would have gotten one.

The loser probably doesn't even have any piercings.

Maybe that's why Tucker actually feels like he can complain to him, one evening at the crash site, after he's done ten fucking million squats and hates everything.

"Seriously. Literally _everyone_ has a glowing tattoo except for me. It's not fair."

For once, Wash has not only his helmet but the entire top half of his armor off. Does that mean he's decided to relax and be less of an asshole? No, it just means he can pinch the bridge of his nose at Tucker.

"I don't think that's very important, Private Tucker."

"Fuck yeah it's important! Tattoos are cool, and the first rule of Blue Team is _be cool."_

"Well," says Wash, desert-dryly, "I'm Blue Team leader, and I say you can be on Blue Team even if you're not cool."

"Ugh, like I care what you think." Tucker slouches back in his chair, wishing for the hundredth time that Church was here. Even though Church would probably just say, _Shut up, Tucker._

"You know," says Wash, "if you actually tried at all, you'd be a pretty cool soldier."

"Shut _up_ , asshole," Tucker groans, but he can't help smiling a little because, y'know. Wash may be a complete loser but he's also a _Freelancer_. Who thinks that Tucker could be cool.

It's not a tattoo, but it's kind of nice.

* * *

Then there's Felix and then there's Locus, and then Wash calls, _Freckles, shake._

In the days and weeks after, the New Republic soldiers stare at Tucker like he's some sort of badass rock star god, and all Tucker can think is that he never wanted to be this cool, not like this.

Not at this price.

When Tucker wakes up in the hospital after fighting Felix at the radio tower—well, the first thing he thinks is _my feet are shiny,_ because holy fuck, Grey has him on a lot of drugs.

But once he stops having conversations with his IV, and once the good news sinks in—that they won, that his friends are all alive, that the Feds and the New Republic have an alliance—

One of the first things that Tucker thinks is, _Well, I guess it's back to being Private Tucker._

Except. Wash calls him "Captain," and doesn't order him to run laps when they disagree. He doesn't boss Tucker's squad around, unless they've been sent to him for training. 

Slowly, Tucker starts to realize that Wash _believes_ in his rank, is trying to support him, and it's just. He has to go sit next to Grif and wordlessly drink a few beers, that's what it means to him.

He swears to himself that he's going to live up to this.

* * *

Tucker's going to die soon.

If he's lucky.

Because Felix grabbed him . . . Tucker isn't sure how long ago, but it's been far too long and now he hurts more than he ever thought possible.  And he tried not to scream, he tried to be brave, he really _fucking_ tried—

But.

Well.

In the end, when Felix stuck the camera in his face and said, _Ask them to come for you,_ Tucker choked on a sob and said, _Wash, please._

He's been alone since that, lying in his own blood on the floor of this cell. Felix didn't bother restraining him again, because he knows that Tucker's too broken to fight anymore. He can't even bring himself to sit up; all he can do is lie here and think miserably of how _fucking disappointed_ Wash is going to be in him.

Everyone will be disappointed—Carolina and Kimball and stupid Palomo—but Wash is the first one who believed in him, who said, _You just need to try,_ and Tucker tried and tried and now here he is, broken and begging on command so Felix can use him as bait.

At least he knows that Wash will stop Caboose from watching the message. That's something.

There's also this: Wash is going to kill Felix. Tucker knows that, and even if he isn't going to be around to see it, he finds it pretty comforting. Wash is going to make Felix regret that he ever leaned close and said, _Y'know, this is basic RTI training for a Freelancer. But I guess even that's too much for you._

Tucker remembers what happened right after Felix said that, and he shudders and wheezes and _fuck,_ everything hurts.

He doesn't want to die, but he really, really wants this to stop.

The door of his cell opens.

"Oh, hey there, Tucker. Ready for some more fun?" 

Just the sound of Felix's voice makes him start shaking now. It's Pavlovian and it's fucked and Tucker _hates_ it.

He wonders if he could manage to barf on Felix's boots in revenge.

"Yeah, I've gotten pretty bored with our little chats too." Felix hauls him up—Tucker bites back a whimper—and drags him out the door. "But you see, somebody's melodramatic Freelancer boyfriend decided to turn up with a bomb and a deadman switch, so it's time for you to be useful."

"He's not my boyfriend," Tucker mutters. He can barely keep his feet under him; he’s pretty sure that if Felix wasn’t dragging him along the hallway, he’d fall over. Felix is a fucking artist with his knife, but Tucker’s still lost a lot of blood by now, and he hasn’t eaten or slept since they grabbed him.

Then Tucker’s brain catches up, and his spine turns to ice as he really understands what Felix said, and all he can think is _Oh shit oh shit he actually came._

Wash wasn't supposed to come for him. Tucker had been so _sure_ that he wouldn't obey Felix's "come alone and unarmed" message.

That's the only—well, Tucker would _like_ to think that's the only reason he broke. Because Wash has lectured him about negotiations with hostages and terrorists, Tucker knows what the protocol is, why the fuck does this have to be the _one time_ that Agent Washington doesn't want to follow protocol?

Felix drags him through the base—there are mercs everywhere, Wash is never getting out of this alive, and Tucker wonders dizzily if he can get Felix to shoot him somehow, but then Felix drags him into a room and there's—

Wash.

Helmet off, no gun, holding a crooked bundle of wires and flashing lights that has to be the bomb.

He looks like _shit,_ the circles under his eyes worse than ever, stubble on his chin and his mouth set in that line of "I've just woken up from a nightmare about my whole team dying and I'm sure it will come true."

That expression used to mean that Tucker was going to do worse drills than usual, and now it means that Tucker is going to watch his best friend die.

And it will be all his fault.

_Fuck._

"Don't—" he manages to rasp out, and then Felix has him forced to his knees, one hand gripping Tucker’s dreads, the other pressing a pistol to the base of his skull.

"Okay, Agent Washington, here's your little friend. He's alive and he's even going to stay that way, if you do what I tell you."

There's a glorious moment where Tucker imagines Wash saying, _Fuck no,_ and backflipping across the room while he pulls out two rifles and then dual-wields his way through a slow-mo, totally awesome battle that ends with Felix and Locus both dead.

But Wash just says, "Okay," and he drops the bomb.

"Well, that's a good first step," says Felix. "Now take off that armor."

And Wash does. He pulls it off piece by piece—Tucker can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Wash totally unarmored, and now Felix is making it happen and it's like. The worst and most depressing stripper show ever.

If Tucker somehow survives this, he will never forgive himself.

When Wash is stripped down to his kevlar undersuit, Felix laughs and says, "Really? It’s that easy to make you give up? Locus is going to be disappointed, I gotta tell you."

"Let him go," says Wash, staring at Felix with the same unsettlingly direct stare as when he told Tucker, _You just have to stick with what you think is best._ "I did what you wanted."

But Felix laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, no, no. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice—see, I read your psych profile. I know you have far too much tragic backstory to bring a secret AI like Tucker did. So you’ve obviously got some _other_ surprise hidden on you. You want me to believe you’ve surrendered? You’ll have to get naked."

Shit, he’s probably right. The plan’s gone wrong, and Wash needs to get out while there’s still time. Tucker finds his voice and says, "Wash—stop—"

But Wash is already peeling off his undersuit.

And Tucker sees Wash's skin. His shoulders and his arms and his chest.

There are glowing blue lines everywhere.

"What the fuck?" says Felix, and it takes Tucker a moment to realize it wasn't just him thinking it, because _what the fuck._

Wash is covered in glowing blue tattoos, from wrist to throat to navel. They're not Sangheili symbols like Grif and Caboose, and they're not a circuitboard like Simmons, and they're not Blood Gulch symbols like Sarge. They're Greek letters and swirls and lines, and they say _Epsilon_ and they say more, _Alpha-Beta-Delta-Sigma-Omega-Gamma-Theta-Eta-Iota,_ and Tucker's regretting every time he made a crack about Wash staying in his armor. Because the whole painful history of the Freelancer AIs is written on Wash's skin and Tucker has no right to see this, he doesn't want to see this, but he's looking at it just the same.

And then Tucker realizes what that means: _Wash had those tattoos all along._

"ARE YOU _FUCKING KIDDING ME?"_ he howls.

He knows he's having hysterics. But this is it. This is how he dies. Not from Felix's torture, not from a bullet to the brain, but from Agent fucking Washington and his _fucking glowing tattoos what the fuck._

"Wow, Tucker," says Church, appearing in front of him. "I had no idea you were so insecure." Then he flickers up into Felix's face. "Oh, yeah. I've been hacking your base. No biggie. Seriously, you didn't think I could be in Wash's armor instead of his implants?"

There's an explosion from outside, and the next moment, Wash is right _there,_ kicking gun out of Felix’s hand, then dodging back when Felix lunges for him.

"And it wasn't a bomb," Wash calls out smugly, bouncing on his toes. "It was a homing device.”

“For the reinforcements,” Church adds. “Bitch.”

Felix lets out a scream of rage and charges Wash. Who is, wow, actually really good at fighting naked. Tucker wonders dizzily if that’s a thing they trained at in Project Freelancer, and if he can get Carolina to give him lessons, and then suddenly he just doesn’t have any strength left and he falls over. Everything is a blur of pain and _what the fuck,_ and Tucker hears Church say, "Okay, seriously Tucker, this isn't funny," but he's lost the ability to speak.

Gradually, things stop hurting. There's this wonderful cool, floaty feeling. Tucker realizes it's the healing unit. He's lying on his back, the healing unit is running, he's not dead and therefore Wash kicked Felix's ass.

Sweet.

He opens his eyes. Wash is leaning over him.

"You fuck," says Tucker. "You have a tattoo."

Wash makes this weird noise that's almost like a laugh. "Yeah. Sorry about that."

"Dude. Not fair."

Wash is back in his undersuit, because nothing will make him less of a prude, and Tucker is—

—Tucker is _alive,_ he can't believe it, he's alive and he's safe and Felix isn't there to smile and say, _Well, actually,_ as he slides the knife in and. 

And then Tucker remembers that if Wash is here, then he watched the message. He knows how weak Tucker is.

"Sorry," he mutters. “Guess I really fucked up.”

He has a feeling he's going to be saying that a lot, when he gets back.

"It's fine," Wash says soothingly. "Everything's okay."

And that hurts, somehow, more than any stern reprimands to _Private Tucker_ possibly could.

"It's _not," says_ Tucker. "I—I _broke,_ okay, I begged when he told me too, and—and—"

"Tucker," says Wash, and it's _that_ voice, the extra-calm Freelancer voice, the one that Tucker can believe even when he's totally panicking, that he could follow into any sort of danger. "You survived. That's okay. That's, uh. Pretty cool."

"Yeah, it's more than most of the Freelancers managed," Church adds, appearing by Wash's shoulder.

"Epsilon," Wash growls.

"What? Comms are down, so is security, Carolina already took out Locus and Felix McFuckface here is not going to wake up for a while. Relax."

". . . I can't believe you have a tattoo," Tucker mumbles.

"Yeah, it's, uh." Wash stops.

"Wow, I just realized I should be _literally_ anywhere else," says Church, and disappears.

“Side-effect of the implantation," Wash finishes with a sigh.

"So Carolina also has one?"

Wash cracks a grin. "Nope. She has two."

"Ugh. That's so unfair." Tucker tries to sit up, and the world swims around him. Wash sets a steadying hand on his back. 

Tucker can hear crashes and screams and explosions in the distance—the cavalry, obviously. Lots of them. Shit, did _everyone_ come on this mission?

"Tell you what," says Wash, his voice only a little bit condescending. "When you get out of the hospital, I'll help you get a cool tattoo.”

Tucker hurts everywhere. He's not okay. He doesn’t want to think about how long he’ll be in the hospital, or how many of his friends heard him beg in that recording, or how soon he’ll start dreaming about Felix.

But Wash's hand is warm and comforting against his spine. Tucker’s alive, and everyone came to save him, and Wash isn’t ashamed of him. And he thinks . . . maybe he’s going to be okay, eventually.

“Oh, like _you_ know anything about what's cool," he says, and Wash laughs.


End file.
